


Love as a geometric progression

by Jactrades



Category: Star Trek (2009)
Genre: Academy Fic, Backstory, Character Study, Gen, Mathematics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-23
Updated: 2011-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 21:35:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/165163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jactrades/pseuds/Jactrades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Gailia, numbers have always been a tool.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love as a geometric progression

For Gaila, numbers have always been a tool, easily grasped and applied to an uncontrollable world. As a child, she puts the dances to algorithms, memorizing the steps long before the rest of her sisters from the slave crèche. Once _they_ catch onto her talent she is grudgingly educated in basic maths in the hour after worship, and eventually set to keeping the books for the household with the help of a PADD full of applied math texts. She has no complaints: knowing the secrets twists of double-entry accounting meant more smuggled packets of food, cloth, incense. She ventures into cryptography at night, when she had the energy, developing stronger codes for the underground and their few secrets. Eventually she finds the key to freedom. _They_ hadn't bothered to properly hide the metalogic underlying the cryptosystems of the household's passwords and locks. Recursion leads her, painstakingly, to the solution, and the solution leads to a starport, shivering in the darkness, while she whispers prayers of light and tries not to think about the statistics of slaves that ran.

Graph theory is the means to plotting out Gaila's first real decision. Aboard a ship in Federation space, body folded into the relaxed pose of the supplicant before the Sisters, she traces the logical steps backwards, throwing out the thousand of dead beginnings, impossible things no escaped slave could hope for, even in the Federation. Her quiet dream is of programming – playing – dancing _freely_ – with the smartest tech a hundred worlds have developed, which means top-of-the-line starships, which means Starfleet, which means the Academy. The Academy is a possible start, she decides, quietly reciting a short blessing for this path through the darkness.

Gaila gets through the Academy – and all of the bewildering choices – by running it all through optimization theory. She wants to study everything in the catalog (for knowledge is the only thing she's ever held as her own), but there are biological constraints on her time: sex, of course, food, and sometimes sleep. Min-maxing helps her pick from the smorgasbord of cadets, too – though she learns it's best not to share the exact algorithm with her bed partners, even the ones who should be able to appreciate the elegant subroutines she used. (Nyota christens it the "Sexing Optimator" after a long night out on the town.)

It's not until Gaila’s halfway through the economics elective course – she's considering tracking general Ops rather than straight Applied Engineering – that she looks at a formula and sees, for the first time – _finally_ – her faith written out in the black numerals. Until that moment, she had been floating through the class bemused, thinking that it must have taken a very Vulcan-y human to develop this utility theory, this way of putting numbers to happiness. She's tabbing through journals on matching theory for her lit review paper, thinking the friction terms might make nice tweaks to the Optimator, when she stumbles across the idea of intertwined utility functions. One person's happiness nested in the other's, and vice versa, creating a converging infinite geometric series, not infinite in sum, but far larger than what an individual could achieve on her own.

"...and the love you shine brightens in your kin and kith, reflected and growing amongst you, 'til a new sun is born...," she quotes to herself.

Gaila dreams that night of her crèche, and does not feel any shadow.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for where_no_woman's [February Drabbletag Challenge](http://community.livejournal.com/where_no_woman/212899.html?thread=1526179#t1526179)


End file.
